June 27, 2012 11:35 PM CDTJune 28, 2012 12:24 AM CDTCowlishaw: And now here's the harsh truth about a college football playoff...

Cowlishaw: And now here's the harsh truth about a college football playoff...

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Q. What will the bowl situation look like? ... Carlton: The national semifinals will be played within the existing bowl system, a concession to tradition and the Big Ten, which wanted the Rose Bowl protected at all cost. Instead of the current four top-tier bowls, the number will rise to six, with the Rose and the new Champions Bowls assured slots.

Hearing horns honking outside my window last night, I can only assume that Tuesday’s announcement of college football’s four-team playoff has been well received.

And having said that I think both sides of the playoff argument should embrace this new system, I do wish to focus on one aspect of it and issue a word of caution.

The work sounds simple enough. A committee of about 15, much like the men’s college basketball committee, will look at teams’ records and strength of schedule and pick the four best to play in two bowl games with the winners advancing to the national championship (quite possibly at Cowboys Stadium).

Q. How hard can that be?

A. Almost impossible.

The groundswell for a radical change in the bowl structure came out of last January’s mess when the BCS produced an Alabama-LSU rematch that was pretty unsatisfactory for everyone involved not named Nick Saban.

Had the new system been in place, presumably the four teams selected would have been LSU and Alabama along with Big 12 champ Oklahoma State and Pac-12 champ Oregon. That’s in spite of the fact that in the final rankings before the bowls, Stanford was actually ranked fourth and Oregon sixth. I’m guessing the committee could have chosen the Ducks with only a minimal protest coming from higher-ranked Stanford since the Cardinal had lost the regular-season meeting with Oregon.

The unpleasantness of a dull, one-sided rematch in the championship and the relative ease at picking these four teams to hold a playoff combined to create a “Hey, we can do this” sense among conference commissioners. That’s how we got to Tuesday’s landmark announcement in Washington D.C.

Here’s the problem. Last year was the aberration, not the rule.

Look at the 2010 rankings after the regular season. You had three undefeated teams (Auburn, Oregon, TCU) and you had three Big Ten teams (Wisconsin, Ohio State, Michigan State) all tied at 11-1. Just picking one of those was problematic enough when it meant a Rose Bowl trip for one (Wisconsin) and New Year’s Day bowls for the others.

When one is getting to compete for the national title game and the others are left behind? Entirely different story.

And who’s to say any one of those three deserved it more than an 11-1 Stanford team that was ranked ahead of the Buckeyes and Spartans? And (the arguments continue) who’s to say that all three of those Big Ten teams and Stanford didn’t play tougher schedules than TCU did to plow through the Mountain West at 12-0?

Is there anything that automatically says a 12-0 team is more deserving than an 11-1 team when the schedules are not balanced?

And, frankly, 2010 was easy compared to 2009.

That’s when there were five undefeated teams ranked in the top six (Alabama, Texas, TCU, Cincinnati and Boise State). Which one do you toss out? And how do you decide that the teams at the bottom end of that group were more deserving than a powerful 12-1 Florida team … one that would eventually obliterate that unbeaten Cincinnati team in the Sugar Bowl.

It was just as messy in 2008. You recall that’s when three Big 12 South teams tied (Oklahoma, Texas, Texas Tech) and Longhorns fans were less than thrilled with a tiebreaker that sent the Sooners to the national title game despite a regular-season loss to UT.

Who would be your picks when Florida, OU, Texas and Alabama represented the top four in the final pre-bowl rankings and yet USC was an equally powerful one-loss team ranked No. 5 while unbeaten Utah and Boise State were ranked seventh and ninth, respectively?

Select four from that group and make everyone happy.

In spite of all this, the plan is well-intentioned. An eight-team or 16-team playoff would leave all but the richest fans unable to attend all the bowls and turn the games into corporate events closer to the Super Bowl’s antiseptic feel than the college atmosphere that must be preserved.

But what sounds great in June will prove next to impossible in December. And committee members will learn that this is absolutely nothing like basketball where the fans of, say, a 20-10 Creighton team are unhappy not to get in as the 68th team.

Fans of an 11-1 LSU team left in the cold in favor of teams from weaker conferences won’t react well, and committee members may feel like the guy who turns to dust in that Indiana Jones movie.

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About Tim Cowlishaw

Tim Cowlishaw has been The Dallas Morning News' lead sports columnist since July 1998. Prior to that he covered the Cowboys for six seasons and the Stars for three as a beat reporter. He also covered the Rangers as a backup beat writer and was the San Jose Mercury News' beat writer on the San Francisco Giants in the late 1980s.

Tim has been appearing regularly on ESPN"s "Around the Horn" since the show made its debut in November 2002. He also worked with ESPN as part of the network's "NASCAR Now" coverage in 2007-08.

Favorite Dallas restaurants: Park, Nick and Sam's, Kenichi.

Worst sports prediction: His first in college ... that Earl Campbell had no shot at the Heisman Trophy.

Best sports memories: Seeing the Dallas Stars hoist the Stanley Cup long after midnight in Buffalo, watching the Dallas Cowboys win the Super Bowl and Texas win the national title in perfect Rose Bowl settings.